by Steve Perry
He felt a surge of triumph. Yes. When she saw him move? Surely that would make her want to capture him in acrylics. Surely it would.
And afterward? Well, that was another experience to imagine, wasn’t it?
24
Mourn stood in the house’s doorway, perturbed. Sola looked at the frown—something he didn’t do much of—and wondered why aloud.
“Somebody has called me out,” he said.
She blinked. “How is that possible? Nobody knows we are here.”
“So I thought. But apparently Creestofer Cluster, currently ranked Fourteenth, does.”
“How do you know?”
He opened the door, which was edge-hinged and made of cheap wood-grained plastic, wider.
Stuck to the door with a knife was a small piece of paper. On it, written by hand, it said,
Greeting M. Mourn—
What say we dance? I shall be behind the large silo next to the empty animal pen a klick southwest of here at noon, if you’ve a mind to meet me.
With all sincerity,
Creestofer Cluster, Fourteenth.
Sola said, “What are you going to do?”
“Meet him,” he said. “Find out how he knew where to find me. If he can, others can.”
“Is that a good idea? Lose, you’re dead, win, we still have to leave, right? Because the match will be recorded even if there isn’t a body lying around.”
“It’s what I do, Cayne.”
She nodded. And yet, she was afraid for him. She didn’t want him to die. Well, that was only natural, wasn’t it? He was a big part of her documentary.
Right, sister. You think that ship is gonna lift? You have enough footage of Mourn and then some. Who do you think you’re fooling here?
She caught a flash of something in Mourn’s face, just a passing hint. “You’re pleased about this, aren’t you?”
He tried to suppress his smile, but failed.
“You can’t wait to try out this new stuff you’ve been working on.”
He gave her a tiny shrug. “Only way to know if it works for sure is to do it against somebody skilled who’s seriously trying to thump you.”
“You could get killed if you’re wrong.”
“Would that bother you so much?”
Don’t tell him, don’t do it—! “Yes, it would.”
Another big smile. “Thank you, I appreciate that. I’m the challenged party, so I’ll keep it bare—no weapons.”
“As you have pointed out more than once, Mourn, if somebody really wants to take you out and he’s good enough, he won’t need a weapon to do it.”
“But M. Cluster doesn’t have a grudge against me, and no particular reason to want me cold. He’s just looking to move up.”
“Maybe.”
“Well. I’ve got a couple hours. I think I’ll stretch and do a light workout, loosen up. Practice a couple of the new steps.”
“Jesu, Mourn. Are you really that calm?”
“Maybe not quite—but I’m not afraid, Cayne. I’m good at what I do. And I’ve got a new toy to try out.”
She shook her head.
“You gonna come along and record it?”
“Damn right I am. If you get beaten to a pulp, at least somebody will get some good out of it. I’m good at what I do, too.”
He reached for the note.
“Leave that,” she said. “I want to get it recorded first.”
He laughed. “Aren’t we a fine pair?”
Shaw’s stellar yacht was not nearly as big as a commercial liner, of course. It was a mere hundred meters long, with but ten guest bedrooms, each with its own fresher; a dining hall, ballroom, library, exercise room; and several observation lounges in front of huge denscris view ports. Plus two kitchens, crew quarters, and, as Shaw said, “ample” storage. And since there was nobody on the vessel save for Shaw, Cervo, Azul herself, and the crew of twenty, it was much quieter, and smelled a lot better than a commercial ship, too.
Probably set him back two or three hundred million standards for the vessel, and operating costs had to run fifteen or twenty million a year, and that’s if he didn’t spend a lot of time system-hopping.
Being rich definitely had some advantages, she thought, as she stepped from her bath—taken in a two-meter-by-two-meter tub carved from a single piece of Cibulian black marble, and outfitted with twenty pulse jets that could deliver everything from a soothing massage to a screaming orgasm, if that was her bent.
She had gone with the massage.
Air blowers inset into the floor, ceiling, and walls went on automatically as she alighted from the tub, offering her a warm and drying breeze whose humidity was perfect and whose speed was not too fast or too slow, but just right.
She moved to stand in front of a full-length holomirror that offered a view of her from any angle she might choose, and fluffed her hair into shape as it and the rest of her dried.
She could get used to this. Could, if she wanted, make it her way of living. Shaw liked her, a lot—inviting her along to watch him fight told her that, when he thought she might be gone when he returned. She had played that well. Didn’t ask to go, shrugged their liaison off as a nice diversion, but wasn’t going to sit around and wait to be his plaything.
He liked that, too. Most men wanted a woman who could be a lover, sister, mother, friend. Strong men—those without big insecurities—often wanted somebody as smart and as talented as they were, to boot. Some wanted a challenge, some a slave, but a man like Shaw? He wanted an equal. Somebody with whom he could run and not have to hold back. She’d realized that early on. Yes, yes, the chase, and all the boy/girl games, but in the end, he wanted somebody into whom he could pour his joy, his worry, and, of course, his seed.
She could play him. Ditch her job as a Confed spy and go native. It had happened before, and usually the Confed was smart enough to let it go. Maybe someday the op would get bored and want to come back, and meanwhile, the Confed had a handle it could use on her. Having access to Shaw would be worth a lot to a smart handler.
She knew men. She knew what they liked, and she could keep Shaw happy. Maybe enough for him to marry her. He was of an age when he might start thinking about a legacy, a son or daughter to carry on.
Maybe she couldn’t keep him from other playmates, a mistress or three, but then, that didn’t really matter. Love wasn’t part of the equation; mutual benefit was.
It was tempting. She didn’t really owe the Confed anything. It had used her as much as she had used it, a fair trade. She liked him, he was smart, handsome, rich, good in bed, and he appreciated her. What was not to like?
She waved at the mirror control to get a view of her hair from behind as it dried. Looked okay.
A year ago, she wouldn’t have had the thought at all. Six months ago, she might have wondered, but would have dismissed it pretty quick. Now?
Now . . .
The door to the suite slide open and Shaw strolled in. He saw her standing there naked.
Well, from the look on his face, she guessed she was going to need another bath in a little while . . .
No question about, having Luna Azul around was definitely worth the effort.
Shaw was stretched out naked next to her, and she was also nude, but somehow more so than he was.
“All relaxed now?” she said.
“Pretty much.”
They smiled at each other.
“So, M. Businessman, how is it that you came to all this?” She waved one hand at the suite, but meant more than that.
“I chose the right parents,” he said.
“Ah.”
“Well, perhaps not quite that easy, but it was the start.”
She rolled up onto her side and looked at him. “Go on.”
He thought about it for a second. Why not? She was an appreciative audience. “My grandfather was a pharmacist, SoAfrican tap, and he owned a small chain of retail drug shops, on Earth. He had ambition, so he started a pharmaceutical company and
began to build it up.
“When he left it to my father—whose given name was Mnembo—to run, Shaw Pharmaceuticals was still a struggling concern. My father worked eighteen-hour days for years before the business turned around and began making real money. Until I was ten or eleven, I barely remember my father—he would generally leave for work before I got up in the morning and usually come home after I had gone to bed. I mostly saw him on holidays. I was a late baby—my mother was my father’s segundo wife—he was polygamous—had six spouses in-residence before I was grown, plus two exes. I have no full siblings, but I did have seven half sisters and two half brothers by five different step-mothers. My biological mother was twenty-two when I was born, my father was forty-eight.
“He was a formal kind of fellow, my father, not mean, but not warm. He left most of the childrearing to his wives, but offered his advice and lessons now and then to the children. He remembered every slight anybody had ever offered him, and paid back every one he could. Once we got to be well-off, he felt as though we had almost become royalty, and that we had images and some kind of noblesse oblige responsibilies that ‘ordinary’ people didn’t have. His children were expected to behave in certain ways, and if we did not, we were corrected.
“Papa plowed the money he made back into research, and his doctors and chemists eventually came up with a couple of things that became standard in just about everybody’s medicine cabinet. One was a broad-spectrum antiviral, the other was a pill that increased female libido. The antiviral saved millions of lives, it would knock out stuff from the common cold to the flu to several kinds of pneumonia, and was one of the most useful drugs ever developed.
“The libido drug, on the other hand, got a lot of men laid. You could drop it in your girlfriend’s coffee and it would dissolve and she’d never know it. Thirty minutes later, she would start getting horny.”
“You haven’t put any of it into my coffee, have you?”
“I hadn’t noticed a need.”
She chuckled.
“Want to guess which drug sold the most?”
Azul smiled. “Libido, by two to one?”
“Try five to one. Thirty years ago, it was the number one selling drug in the galaxy, with the male version at number two. The antiviral wasn’t even third—a rival’s sleeping medication beat it.
“By the time the patents on those ran out, we had come up with others shifted a few molecules to the left or right, had studies showing they did something new, so we didn’t lose much business.
“I started working there as a kid, doing odd jobs, stocking, running errands. All of the children did, sooner or later. A rite of passage. None of my half sibs still work there; most are ‘retired,’ living on their inheritances.
“By the time I was fifteen, I knew more things about pharmaceuticals than most of the other employees. When I turned eighteen, I took a full-time job as my father’s assistant. When I was twenty-five, he retired, and I took over. I wasn’t the oldest of his children, but I was the one who had the moves.”
“Cause any friction at family dinners?”
He laughed. “Hardly. By then, I was making them too much money for them to care that the kid was running things. By the time I was thirty-three, I had increased our share of the market by four hundred percent, had opened branch factories and sales outlets all over the galaxy. Had to go public to raise the money to do it, but I kept seventy percent of the stock for our family, and I personally now own fifty-one percent. We have a board of directors, but it’s my company—I run it.
“Our people were aggressive in all areas. We got several major contracts to supply various planetary health systems, and the big plum was a series of low bids for much of the Confed military. If you’d bought a thousand shares at a hundred stads each, the first week they were offered, and kept them, you’d have gotten three splits by now, and the stock is going for almost four hundred a share. You could sell them tomorrow and retire on what you’d make.”
“That’s pretty impressive,” she said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?”
“But.”
He rolled up and looked at her. “‘But’?”
“It isn’t just about money for you. There’s something else.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “Nothing I can put my finger on intellectually. It’s a feeling. Call it an artistic hunch. You run the company, sounds like you can’t hire enough ships to haul in all your profits, you’re good at it; but that’s not what you really want to do when you grow up, is it?”
He leaned back. She was too clever by half, this one. She couldn’t know, he had never told anybody, but she had a piece of it, somehow. Maybe it was artistic intuition.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
Which was true, but she already knew about it, just not how important it was to him. What could it hurt for her to know? He was in it now, and it would come out soon enough, once he started wading through the high-ranked players and knocking them silly.
“The Flex,” he said. “I’m going to become the top player in the Musashi Flex.”
She nodded, as if the idea wasn’t the least bit silly. “Are you good enough to do it?”
“I am now.”
“You must have trained for a long time.”
“I have. More than fifteen years, three major arts, half a dozen minor ones.” He considered for a moment telling her about Reflex. No. She didn’t need to know about that.
“How far do you have to go?”
“Not far at all,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
25
M. Cluster was waiting at the appointed place. There were two men there, but Mourn marked the fighter as soon as he saw him. Cluster was large, pushing two meters tall, and probably almost a hundred kilos, well built, dressed to move, and probably ten or twelve years younger than Mourn.
Aren’t they all, these days? Younger?
Cluster looked familiar, but Mourn couldn’t remember seeing him before. Man must have come up from the ranks recently, maybe while Mourn was training in Java. Happened that way sometimes. You thought you knew everybody in your shifting cohort, knew whom you could challenge, who could come looking for you, but sometimes you got a surprise.
The man with Cluster was younger still, maybe twenty-five, and handsome to the point of prettiness. The younger man seemed fit enough, to judge from the tight and paint-thin orthoskins he wore, but he didn’t stand or move like a fighter.
Boyfriend, Mourn figured.
Cayne looked at the pair. She said, “I ran a check on Cluster. He’s been on a streak. A year ago, he was Seventy-First. Three months ago, he was Thirty-Fifth, and he’s jumped twenty-one places since, took him six fights. He must be pretty good.”
Mourn nodded. “Happens that way, sometimes. Let’s go say hello.”
They approached the two men and stopped three meters away.
“Ah, Mourn. And your lovely companion . . . ?”
“F. Sola,” Mourn said. “A documentarian doing recordings.”
Cayne waggled her cam.
“Really? I’d like a copy of the fight when we’re done, if it isn’t too much trouble?”
“Even if you lose?” she offered.
“Oh, especially if I lose, I’ll need to see what happened. But I won’t. Lose.”
He turned and smiled at the younger man. “This is Jorjay, my . . . intended. Maybe if you and I kill each other, Mourn, Jorjay and Fem Sola can console each other.”
Jorjay glared at Cluster. “Never going to let me forget it, are you? One time it happened, just the once.”
Cluster shrugged and gave the younger man a toothy, fake smile. “So you say. And of course, I believe you.”
He turned back to Mourn. “I’m Fourteenth, as of this morning, at which time you were Tenth, so everything should be in order. If you want to check first . . . ?”
Mourn shook
his head. “I’ll take your word for it. I’d like to do this bare,” he said. “If you don’t mind?”
“That works for me. Hate to put blood on my new weeds.”
Mourn smiled. He was aware that Cayne had switched on her cam and was moving to the side for a better view.
“A question first?”
“If it’s not too personal,” Cluster said. He smiled back.
“How did you happen to come across me here?”
“Ah. Well. Jorjay and I came to see the crater—we were in the neighborhood and thought it would be a . . . romantic stop. I have a new toy—it’s not quite . . . legal, but it involves a piece of computer software that will scan and match faces against those stored in its memory. It’s very good, this program, it uses fifty points of match, including the ears, which almost nobody bothers to disguise. I have the images of the Top Twenty stored and whenever I can get access to a planet’s port security cams—which is actually much easier than you’d think, if you don’t mind spending a few stads—I run the recordings through the program. Hard to do that on really populated worlds with a lot of traffic, it takes forever, but on a lightly settled planet like this one without all that many visitors, I can check back as long as a few weeks. You came up, and how fortunate for me that was. I hired an investigator to find you. You weren’t trying to hide, so here I am.”
Mourn nodded. “Clever.”
“I must confess the computer program was Jorjay’s idea, and his creation. He’s a smart lad with such things.”
Jorjay smiled, revealing dimples.
He got a real smile in return from Cluster this time.
Wasn’t love wonderful?
Bad luck, but at least it wasn’t something that Weems could do to find him—unless he figured out which planet Mourn was on. He might consider wearing a skinmask to hide his features when he spaced to new worlds. And he’d have to remember to disguise his ears, too.
Mourn said, “You ready?”
“Anytime.”
“Let’s dance.”
Mourn turned to a forty-five-degree angle, bent his knees, and lowered his stance, watching the bigger man. For martial arts to really work, you needed for it to be almost reflexive, and he hadn’t been training the new steps long enough for that. He was going to have to think more than he wanted, but if he was going to try it, that was just how it would have to be. If the new stuff didn’t work, and he survived the clash, he could always revert to what he knew.
